Graffiti: the colours on the wall

Below the surface of that layer of colour on a public walkway is a story of an individual sharing their world with the rest of us.

Graffiti artist Martin Schlick says there's a lot to learn about the mysterious community of graffiti artists.

"My name is Masher," he says.

"It's my second identity, my second name, that's what I started with probably 12 years ago and I kept it in the graffiti scene."

He says while many of us will walk past a piece of graffiti and think it looks like every other, he can tell who did it just from their style.

"A lot of people actually know my graffiti name because these days you put it online, you're in magazines or people walk past your wall and they see the name and they like it so they pay you a bit of respect," says Martin.

"They might talk about your name Masher but they might not know that it's you so when they meet you, they realise there's two different identities."

He says a graffiti artist's style might not necessarily reflect their true personality.

"If you see a painting and it's big and edgy people think oh man that must be a two metre guy, he's agressive and that's what his style reflects," he says.

"But he might actually be this nice, little person who likes flowers and gardening."

He says while graffiti dates back to ancient civilisations, our modern impressions of graffiti came from a man by the name of Cornbread from Philladelphia in the United States in 1969.

"He started spreading his name Cornbread all around town with a spray can," says Martin.

"He was believed to be the first one but when it really kicked off was when the New York Times picked up a guy's little tag saying TAKI 183.

"He was just a little messenger who left the abbreviation of his name and 183 was the name of the number of the street that he lived on, Manahattan High Street.

"At that time there was a lot of unemployment and drugs and violence, kids weren't able to go to school, they just hated their lives basically.

"They said wow, a kid from our little ghetto can get his name in the newspaper, that's amazing.

"So they copied that and everyone grabbed a marker, whatever they could find, to leave their name in the streets."

He says from there people started to create their own style and paint artworks that were bigger and better than the last to try and stand out against the rest.

"Even though graffiti was illegal at that time and it's still illegal but for them it was a way out and a lot of them became artists," he says.

"I met some of them and they're 40, 50 years old now and they still love it."

He says the graffiti community is very close and you can travel the world and meet up with people in every country.

Martin says it's more popular back in his home country of Germany because of the price of spray paint.

"They're three dollars a can, here they're 13 bucks," he says.

"There were a lot of legal walls where I'm from, you get a lot of commissions.

"Here it's a bit quieter in the small places whereas in Germany, even in the small places, there's a lot of graffiti.

"People do it for the love of graffiti."

But not everyone is a fan.

"Some people still think that if you have a can in your hand, you're a vandal," he says.

He says that attitude is gradually changing as more graffiti artwork is displayed in some of the biggest galleries in the world.

To ease those concerns further, he says there's plenty of opportunities for people to do it legally.

"I got paid for my first graffiti, it was 50 dollars and I got five spray cans and they gave me an old garage and they said you can start here," says Martin.

"People began to support it and I went to new cities and met more and more people."

He says old abandoned buildings in Germany have made some of the best spaces for graffiti exhibitions, including old bowling alleys and supermarkets with everything still intact.

"It's like a big playground and they just started opening them up to the public because the artist is there and it's in that special environment," he says.

"You don't have to put it on a square canvas, it's just out there and it feels totally different.

"Every time you get a bit better, you try something new and that's what I'm trying to teach the kids I'm working with, that it doesn't matter where you're at in life, it's just about where you're going and if you practice and study hard you can get there," he says.